Hello, all. As you know, our District Director, Doug Failing, has moved on to his new position as Executive Director of Highway Programs at Metro and we are awaiting the arrival of the Interim District Director, Rick Land, later this month. Rick is currently Caltrans Chief Engineer. He will be here for approximately three months, until the position is filled. We look forward to learning as much from him as possible while he familiarizes himself with the district. Upper management is also working to fill the Program and Project Management Deputy position following the departure of Tad Teferi and hope to be advertising for a new deputy soon.

As the District moves forward under new leadership, our continuing goal for the future is to be the consultant of choice for our partner, Metro, and to continue our stellar record of delivering projects on time and on budget.

The passage of Measure R last November will bring $40 billion to transportation projects in Los Angeles County, divided into $32 billion for transit and rail projects and $8 billion for highway projects.

Over the past five months, we have been working closely with Metro to identify highway projects and have formulated an $8 billion project list. These projects are on Metro’s recently-approved long range plan. What does this mean for Caltrans? We will continue to be busy for the next 10 years.

Some projects are beginning construction now, like the San Bernardino Freeway (I-10) HOV lanes from the San Gabriel River Freeway (I-605) to Puente Avenue, with a groundbreaking ceremony held on November 3. Two other major projects are scheduled to be advertised, the Simi Valley Freeway (SR-118) Widening Phase II and the Golden State Freeway (I-5) HOV lanes from the Ronald Reagan Freeway (SR-118) to the Hollywood Freeway (SR-170).

Within the coming two years we expect to have more than $2 billion under construction. Thank you for making District 7 Number One in project delivery despite the furloughs and economic impacts. I look forward to working with all of you as we strive to continue producing outstanding work.